Don Woolford

The prime minister, in a generally optimistic 28-minute annual update on the Afghan war, said the transition from allied to local forces was on track.

She was backed by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who continued bipartisan support for Australia's commitment to the war against insurgency and terrorism.

Ms Gillard, who was in Afghanistan in mid-October, said progress since 2009 and planning through 2014 and beyond should give Australians "cause for measured confidence and resolve".

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She said Australia's contribution - about 1550 troops out of a 100,000-strong coalition force and an Afghan national force of nearly 352,000 - was "proportionate to our own interest and to the contribution of our allies and the world".

Ms Gillard detailed actions to try to minimise insider attacks, while noting British forces have suffered another overnight.

Australia has suffered four such attacks, with seven killed and 12 wounded.

Commanders were analysing the attacks, with each having specific motivations and circumstances.

"We must understand them to defeat them," Ms Gillard said.

Moreover, Afghan recruits were subject to an eight-step vetting process to weed out insurgent sympathisers and subversives.

Ms Gillard said it would be a strategic mistake to overestimate the enemy's strength and that to see an adversary's hand where it may not exist only enhances the propaganda value of an attack.

"The best evidence that we will prevail against the threat of insider attacks is this: we have not allowed it to disrupt our training and operations," she said.

Mr Abbott said progress was fragile, the Taliban difficult to dislodge in the south, the Pakistan border porous and it was fair enough for Australians to ask why more hadn't been achieved.

But if the mission failed Afghanistan would revert to feudalism, terrorists would return and nuclear-armed Pakistan would be destabilised.

Mr Abbott, unlike the prime minister, emphasised how the war has helped girls.

He spoke of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by insurgents for standing up for the right to go to school.

At another point Mr Abbott said: "There was never going to be a clear victor in this war.

"Still, each village that is no longer subject to extortion, each child whose horizons have been lifted, each girl who is now able to go to school and make her own life constitutes some kind of victory."